The Spirit of Dogie  

The Spirit of Dogie Long is the story of an infant boy who is found by cowboys on a cattle drive from New Mexico to California in the 1870s. During his first 12 years, the crew teaches the boy how to handle himself among cattle, horses and cowboys the Cowboy Way, with honesty, compassion, and integrity. His horses, in effect, teach him the same values. On the trail, cowboys tell stories of bravery, cowardice, anger and comedy, friendship and enmity, tales about the goodness of their mothers and sisters, or other relationship they’ve had with women. Conversation, stories, and songs are their only entertainment. Dogie grows up deeply interested in his way of life, because his cowboy partners are proud, zealous, skilled, and very happy about what they do. They also are as careful about what they say and do around the boy, as they are about anyone they deeply respect. So, Dogie also learns from the great good example of men who do their best at the way they make a living and become good men and good hands at being cowboys, physically and morally. In Dogie’s day cowboys respected all women and were careful to watch their language and their behavior in the presence of women. Alas, Dogie grows up knowing only one woman, a very efficient and very cold person who works at the headquarters of the ABC Cattle Company that hires the cowboys who raise him. Aside from schooling him in reading, writing, and arithmetic, that woman doesn’t have much to do with him. The ABC’s have a ranch near Magdalena, New Mexico. In the Spring, Summer and Fall the cowboys run the ranch and cattle. In the Fall, the owners also buy their neighbors’ cattle and combine them with the ABC’s herd that that will be driven across the winter trail to California for sale. Dogie’s life goes on fine for the first 12 years, although he never knows the affections that only mothers and sisters can give. However, one day when he is 12 a young mother and her daughters come to his rescue after he is lost in a snowstorm after a stampede. In their company he continues as a trail driver, but he also fulfills his ambition as a horse-breaker and trainer and starts what he thinks will be a new life. However, too soon, he is forced to go out on his own again, as orphaned or otherwise displaced young cowboys often did in those days. He is separated from his outfit in a extraordinary and unexpected way.

The World in Pancho's Eye

Born into a family of cattlemen on the southern Arizona border at the beginning of the Great Depression, Mikey Summers is raised by people who are wilder than the animals under their care. Maggie, his mother, is quick to love, but also quick to fight, loves contention as much as peace, likes to run and play, but is decent with a fine moral sense. Based on J.P. S. Brown's own experiences growing up and ranching in Mexico and Arizona.

  Wolves At Our Door -- "2009 Spur Award Finalist"

"Anyway, I don't think Arturo Mendez was here to talk about logs," he said. What did he really want?" Kane asked. "To do an evil thing." "What was that?" "To release wolves in our country."Along the border of southern Arizona and Northern Mexico, a close-knit group of Anglo and Hispanic families struggle to keep their ranches alive amidst the depredations of drug lords and smugglers. Here, age-old values collide with gangs of hardened border criminals in a raw tale of action, adventure, and justice. J.P.S. Brown opens a window onto a part of the world that few have seen and even fewer have understood, offering a view of the world of cattle ranching in an area where homes are still without electricity or plumbing. Where ranches are reachable only by plane or horseback, and where neighbors are family or deadly foes.

  Jim Kane

"Caballero means gentleman horseman. The word is derived from the horse. The horse gave this name to the man. A fine foundation." No one who was ever raised with horses and learned to do his work horseback will ever feel quite so complete a man afoot as he does horseback. A horseman also believes that the horse is never complete without the work of a man to do.
The story of an American cowboy doing his job in Mexico.

  Outfit

In the time of our grandfathers, an outfit was a group of men who husbanded a herd of cattle to market. Ranches also became known as outfits because they are equipped to husband the bovine from birth to market. A cowboy's gear became known as an outfit. A man-child might be called a "little outfit" by his father, who was also born to an outfit. He is an outfit too, because he was born with the equipment and potential for husbandry of cattle. He is born a cowboy and it is inevitable that cowboys are born and not made.

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  Blooded Stock

A.B. Cowden is long, lean, and every bit as tough as the unforgiving frontier where he makes his home. Since before the Civil War his beef cows have grazed the Arizona Range. It was a time when ranchers were neighbors united in the ongoing war against the Apaches and the bandits from south of the border. But in 1885 barbed wire and greed rode into Arizona long with an Eastern cattle baron and ruthless hired guns, like the trigger-happy Briggs Brothers. As Patriarch of the Cowden clan, A.B. picked up his rifle to face these bushwhackers and thieves. But even his sureshot and iron will could not save his son Ben from having a price put on his head or his daughter from a great danger--a band of renegade Apache warriors led by the great chief called Yawner.

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  Horseman

Cattleman Ben Cowden accused of cattle theft and murder, and pursued by lawmen on the payroll of his enemies, makes an epic ride across two Arizona counties to clear his name. A stirring saga that captures the spirit of the southwest through the life and times of the unforgettable men and women who carved their destiny from a magnificent land of sandstone canyons and sun-painted hills....

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  Ladino

Ben Cowden is no swaggering lover. He is a horseman, a stubborn son of Arizona. But now Ben is getting his lessons in the amorous arts--from the most beautiful woman he's ever laid eyes on. Margarita Elias Odoms is the unhappy new wife of the ex-Texas Ranger hired by ranch boss Duncan Vincent to drive the Cowdens out of Arizona. When Ben crosses into Sonora to save Margarita from despair, love turns to war. With a missing shipment of hijacked gold on the loose, and his sister Eileen in trouble with a crazy family named Bonner, Ben is already fighting on two fronts. But trouble always comes in threes; now there is a price on Ben's head and he must battle to the finish with a tall Texan, full of all the evil and greed that had brought him into this unforgiving, proud land...

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  Native Born

In this fourth volume of J.P.S. Brown's Arizona Saga series, the Cowden family continues its battle for grazing rights in Arizona Territory along the Mexican border. The family defends cattle country on the Santa Cruz river that the Apaches call The Enchanted Land in a war against an eastern syndicate that seeks to drive out all the region's original settlers. Through bribery, slave tradiing and heroin smuggling, the syndicate led by boss Duncan Vincent, increases its political influence and wealth and legitimized a disciplined gang of thugs that calls itself the Arizona Rangers. The Cowden brothers have only their guns, fists, good horses, and good neighbors with which to defend themselves in the total range war that ensues. They separate during the battle and Les Cowden finds himself along in the fight and in love with a girl who is one of his family's worst enemies.

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  Cinnamon Colt and other stories

These stories are about a life. They're not good and they're not bad, as most lives must be. They are about beauty and goodness when they hurt. They are about the short lives of animals and the long, long lives of people. I hope people can throw their hearts to the winds when they read them, as I did when I wrote them. I was a full-time cowboy when I wrote these stories. Nothing made me FEEL better than to see a cow baling off a hill trying to get away and me ready to stop her. Nothing made my heart beat more pleasurably than the moment when I turned my horse toward home in the evening. Nothing has ever been better for me than cowboying and writing about it.

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  The Forests of the Night

The young duck dove under the surface of the pool as the hawk swooped at his head. The duck was tired. He could not hide from hawk eyes in the clear pool. The hawk hovered confidently, following him. A full-grown jaguar stopped at the edge of the stream to watch them, his eyes bracing, still, speculating over his chances for a meal. The hawk dove again, made a snatching splash, clung a moment and then beat his wings to keep from settling in the water. He caught the air and flew again to rest and wait.
The jaguar walked across the stream cooling his feet and lapping a drink as he moved. His business was the unhurried pursuit of three small deer who had watered at the pool that morning....He ran quietly, listening for the deer. He slowed when he heard them close ahead. He was sure how far ahead they were. He could not make a mistake so serious that his prey would get away. He had made sure his scent was frightening the deer. He controlled their flight when they were afraid.

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